The OT is for defined principles of charity & against charging money at interest. Where do you think Jesus & the prophets got it? It’s the Christians (especially the Protestants) who are prone to self-righteous anti-nomianism(!), because apparently the “law of love” doesn’t explicitly ban failing to tithe or being a usurer.
Of course the GOP could survive without religion. Single-member district plurality voting produces a 2 Party System. All the Republican Party has to do to survive is remain more relevant than any potential upstart party. So yes, they’d survive. They’d just have to change to accomodate the different political environment. Whether or not it would still be “as we know it today” would be for you to decide. It seems to me that lacking the social issues to attract voters they’d have to moderate their plutocratic economic agenda.
Yay.
The problem is it seems the Republican party needs to have something to hate and demonize to remain relevant. The party largely fueled by fear and hatred these days. If they get rid of the religious base there goes at least half their raison d’être (e.g.: Gays, fear of knowledge and the educated, women’s right to control their biology, etc…), which pretty much leaves them xenophobia and racism, which is not enough to win elections on anymore. Fiscal conservatives have been sidelined, or have left the party altogether, and there weren’t enough of them anyway.
As much as I’d love to see the party swing back to some semblance of sanity by dumping the religious baggage, I don’t see how, in the short term, it helps them.
If you look at the demographic maps of who voted Dem. vs. who voted Pubbie in the last two elections, you’ll realize that religion got nothing to do with it. The real breakdown between the parties is: Dem=urban, Pubbie=rural. The formula USED to be Dem=urban, Pubbie=rural+suburbs. But the Pubbies have lost their lock on the suburbs over the last two elections, largely because these relatively affluent voters’ major (to the point of being only) concern is “Keep govt. hands off my money!” The total inability of the last two administrations to cut government spending (instead spending more than Dem administrations, mostly on wars) and their failed economic policies has lost them the suburban vote.
Given that analysis, it’s really obvious what the Pubbies have to do to regain power, but I don’t know if they’ll be able to do it, because it would mean clipping the wings of their hawkish factions, big time.
Any political party has different groups - or wings - that constitute its basic make-up. The modern Republicans are dominated by two wings - Wal Mart and Wall Street. Sadly, it is the Wall Street wing that is served once the group gets into office and wants certain laws passed. The Wal Mart wing is merely used for its numbers and votes to win the election. Once they get into office, it is the Wall Street financial agenda that is served.
Just look at each groups issues. The Wall Streeters got their tax cuts on the rich, deregulation on business, free trade laws for corporations and government subsidies. The Wal Mart crowd wanted to stop abortions - sorry but not this time, wanted to bring prayer back into pubic schools - sorry but not this time, wants to push creationsim over evolution- sorry but not this time, wants programs to stop gays and their lifestyle - sorry but not this time (California duly noted as the exception).
I wonder when the religious Right will come to their senses and realize they are being badly used in this arrangement?
And has been noted with this years elections results, the demographics of the Party are all running contrary to the next twenty years of census projections. They are the party of the white man at a time when white men are becoming the minority in this land.
The Republicans can either re-invent themselves or die just like the Whigs. I am betting they fight change with their last dying breath. Current Republican office holders care much more about their own income and jobs than they do some abstract idea likethe future of their party. Its all about the short term in this country now - and the Republicans symbolize that in spades.
And as far as the libertarian sector of the party goes - its a joke. … a bad joke.
I disagree with this sentiment. The fundamentalist faction may never vote Democratic but they won’t vote top of the ticket R if someone they want isn’t there either. At least here in Texas, many were lukewarm on John McCain at best until he added Sarah Palin to the ticket. The only reason so many people went along with making him the nominee was to vote against Hillary who was seen as the de facto Dem candidate til March. It wasn’t so much that he was everyone’s first best choice as they would vote for anyone against Hillary.
I would like to see the party I once belonged to turn itself around and distance itself from the fundamentalist faction or at least make it less of a voice. I am not at all optimistic that will happen.
Not like the Democrats at all. :rolleyes:
The key thing in any coalition is for everybody to get something out of it somewhat in proportion to what they put into it. You have to wonder what the Wal Mart/Evangelicals have gotten out of the Republican coalition over the last two decades?
This was reported on 538.com and comes out of the Dole Institute
Six points of general consensus among the reporters, strategists and analysts that were present at the Dole Institute.
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Obama will have a relatively long honeymoon period, and the public will be inclined to be relatively sympathetic toward him.
1a. The Democrats’ largest problem is with the public perception of their Congressional leadership. -
Obama, politically speaking, has handled his transition very well. The Republicans on the panel felt extremely reassured by appointments like Jim Jones and Robert Gates. This bought Obama a huge amount of political capital.
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The Republican bench is relatively inadequate at the present time in terms of candidates for national office.
3a. On the other hand, the 2012 Presidential cycle is already being looked at as something of a lost cause. Some of the stronger candidates – both known and unknown – might want to wait until 2016 to run.
3b. In the long-term, the future of the party probably lies in governor’s offices. If the Republicans are smart, this may be their major focus in 2010-12, as opposed to the Congress and even perhaps the Presidency. -
Sarah Palin is, for the time being, the public face of the Republican Party.
4a. This is not necessarily a good thing for the Republican Party. -
The compressed primary calendar is problematic.
5a. The compressed primary calendar is unlikely to change. -
Obama ran the best campaign we have seen in a generation.
And on a related note I’ve often wondered . . .
Many of the Democratic social policies seem to come right out of a secular humanist tradition, and so I wonder, would the Democratic party, as we know it today continue to exist in some form without secular humanism?
In a strict sense - neither of these two things are going away so maybe we shold confine ourselvesto the effects of these on the party system.
Interesting. I see very vocal evangelicals/fundamentalists like Pat Robertson and James Dobson being kowtowed to by the Republicans. I don’t see Madalyn Murray O’Hair or Richard Dawkins being kowtowed to by the Democrats.
I would submit that religion is a much larger and more integral part of the Republican Party than secular humanism is of the Democratic Party. The Republicans tout religion. They shout it from the rooftops. They cater to evangelicals and fundamentalists and Mormons and pro-life Catholics. They’re [del]almost[/del] obsequious to that faction.
Democrats are almost embarrassed by their atheist/agnostic/secular humanist faction. Democrats pray almost as much as Republicans in public. There is exactly ONE atheist Congressman, Pete Stark of California. When secular humanist issues come to the forefront, there is a great deal of picking and choosing that’s done on what gets publicly condoned and what gets publicly condemned. Hell, the Defense of Marriage Act passed with an overwhelming majority in 1996…even ultraliberal Paul Wellstone voted in favor of it!
Your comparison fails.
Please list those Democratic social policies that you consider to be tied to secular humanism.
Ronald Reagan is the most popular Republican in history, and one of the most popular presidents in history. And his appeal had nothing to do with religion. Sure, he paid lip service to it, but the core of his appeal was his belief in small government and free markets, his strong stand on opposition to Communism, and his positive disposition and optimistic attitude.
The Republican party would be a LOT healthier if it got back to that kind of attitude. Today’s Republicans are either from the religious right, or they are ‘angry conservatives’ who are against a whole lot of things, but not really FOR a lot of things.
Republicans need to become cheerful champions of small government, personal responsibility, freedom, and American exceptionalism.
This talk of the death of the Republican party is hilarious. I remember exactly the same conversations taking place over the death of the Democratic party just a few years ago. The pendulum will swing back - and will be accelerated if the Democrats use their current power to over-reach and impose new big government programs and liberalism on the public.
This is, of course, completely false. Americans who practice their religion donate far more of their time and money to charity than the secular do.
I’d dig up a cite, but there is really no need.
Regards,
Shodan
But you do see the likes of William Ayers, Bernadine Dorhn and Ward Churchill esconced in the universities and academic world, from which the Democrats and the left in general get their crackbrained ideas. You find the influence of Saul Alinsky on both Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama (and many others, Alinsky being something of a cult figure among lefties). The religious right has the churches, the irreligious left has the universities. And I have not noticed that the average college professor is any less likely than the average clergyman to be a mediocrity or a crackpot. It is simply absurd to insist that secular humanism has had no significant influence on our politics.
In any case, as I and many others have noted, both sides like to cast themselves in the role of an embattled minority defying a corrupt and oppressive establishment while at the same time insisting that they somehow speak for the majority.
Certainly.
Roe vs Wade; Eliminating prayer and the mention of God from public places; prevention and opposition to school vouchers for parochial schools; need I continue with more? The list is quite exhaustive.
Now your turn:
Please list those Republican social policies that you consider to be directly tied to religion?
The problem with this (apart from the turnout issue someone mentioned earlier) is that it is a purely static analysis - it assumes there is a Republican candidate, and then tries to assess which groups will vote for that candidate.
However, candidates don’t appear from nowhere. The strength of the religious right comes from its strength in primaries as much as its eventual strength in the general election. Fundamentalist voters make up a significantly higher percentage of the turnout in GOP primaries than they do in November. They are also very well mobilized, and a good source for funds. While Reagan was able to appeal to them, and then ignore them to a large extent once elected, that was presumably because he created a much broader coalition. A Republican elected now, especially one without Reagan’s prodigious skills in appealing to individuals, woudl be far more likely to find himself beholden to the Religious Right.
You even saw this effect in the recent elections. McCain isn’t, I don’t think, a man of the fundamentalist right. But he was forced to try to appeal to that constituency, if only to try to deal with the threat of Huckabee (who I believe would have lost the popular vote by a much greater margin, though the electoral college would not have been much changed).
Please provide me with a cite to any policy that is in favor of “eliminating prayer.”
I would say the opposition to same sex marriage is pretty much tied to religion.